Butterfly Kisses
by allred12
Summary: Ron experiences three mornings with is daughter at three different stages of her life, seeing how she grows and changes. A little father daughter sweetness.


Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor do I own the song that this title is based on "Butterfly Kisses" by Bob Carlisle.

Butterfly Kisses

A six year old Rose Weasley woke up early on a Sunday morning of June. She padded down the steps and poured herself a glass of milk in the kitchen. Then she sat down at a rather large oak table.

Rose was one of those curious children who could be completely content with simply sitting quietly. She stared out the large window at the head of the table overlooking the green Weasley property. Rose did this nearly every morning; she liked to wake up early, she hated to waste any second when she could appreciate each bird and flower and tree and blade of grass in the gloriously warm early summer sun.

Differently this morning was the appearance of a tall red-haired man in the kitchen doorway. "Good morning, Rosie", a slightly groggy Ron Weasley said.

"Good morning, daddy", Rose smiled back.

"May I join you?"

"Of course, Daddy."

Ron sat down and magicked himself a cup of coffee. He settled next to his daughter and summoned the newspaper. When it settled nicely on the table in front of him, he took out the comics and passed them to his daughter. She assumed a look on her face that Ron had seen thousands of times on Hermione. Whenever Rose or Hermione began to read anything, they would scrunch their very similar noses up, and their eyes would glass over, and sometimes in Rose's case, she would stick her little pink tongue out the side of her mouth.

Ron loved moments like this. This was the peace, the family, he had fought for thirteen years ago. This is what his brother had died for: the opportunity for a young father to sit with is daughter at a kitchen table without any fear of death.

Rose had finished her cartoons and had resumed her stare out the window. Ron followed her gaze. A colorful garden had been planted meticulously by Hermione in front of the window, and surrounding the flowers this morning were two blue butterflies. Rose (and Ron) were transfixed on rapid beating of their paper thin wings.

"They're pretty, aren't they daddy?" Rose asked breaking the silence.

"Yes, Rosie, just like you", Ron sighed gently to his daughter. She looked at her dad for a second. Then she carefully got up from her chair and climbed onto her dads lap. She kissed him gently on his cheek, like butterfly wings.

"I love you, Daddy", she said sweetly.

"I love you too, Rosie", Ron smiled as he hugged his daughter close.

It was Christmas break, and as per usual, the house was crowded with various members of the massive Weasley-Potter clan. Ron just wasn't sure why it was his and Hermione's house that was crowded with everyone. The Burrow was currently being renovated and barely held everyone anyway. Shell Cottage had been an option, but after a near drowning last Christmas when Fred had incited several cousins to try cliff jumping some parents were still wary. Harry and Ginny had been the next candidates, but for some ungodly reason they had decided to build their house with one wall made entirely out of glass, which was not opportune for a large family gathering that included the founder of Weasley Wizard Wheezes. So somehow, Ron and Hermione had found themselves frantically setting up extra beds so that the family could maintain their tradition opening all the Christmas presents together.

Ron had a splitting headache. One of the less conventional traditions was that Ron and his brothers and Harry would get completely wasted on Christmas Eve. On the first Christmas without Fred, George, after Mr. and Mrs. Weasley had gone to bed, had begun toasting his brother and everyone else who they could think had died, and Ron guessed it had just stuck.

After banging his head on the headboard rather suddenly after a dream, Ron had given up and come downstairs and was indulging in some much needed coffee laced with a simple headache potion.

The sun was beginning to rise and Ron had a perfect view from the kitchen table. He was mesmerized, so he didn't notice when his sixteen year old daughter joined him at the table.

"Lily snores like a hippogriff giving birth", a rather grumpy Rose mumbled. Ron was slightly startled and dribbled some of his coffee down his chin. "Sorry, dad", Rose said as she stood up to get a napkin.

Ten years later, Rose still somehow maintained her early waking hours, although without a good night's sleep, her mood clearly suffered.

"Good morning, Rose", Ron said laughing quietly at his daughter's comparison.

"Good morning, dad", Rose responded as she made herself a cup of coffee and plopped down in the chair next to her dad.

Rose had hardly changed from when she was a child, as far as her personality went. Even at the age of six, Rose had been mature. As she aged, her passion for books had grown considerably, and not unlike her mother, she consumed whatever knowledge came within a reaching grasp. If Rose's personality was considered stagnant since she was a child, then her appearance had changed considerably. Ron looked at his daughter. She had Ron's muted blue eyes, Hermione's nose, Ron's mouth, yet her hair was a perfect combination of both her parents. It was a light auburn, looking positively red in the sun and brown under the muted light of a fire, with a bushiness that was somewhat controlled by the influence of her father's waves. Ron also noticed, at times with slight horror, that her physique was continually moving more towards that of a woman and less the little girl. Even in her pajamas, which consisted of a muggle Liverpool football sweater from Hermione's parents and a pair of old sweats, she was beautiful, and getting more so every day; a fact which scared Ron to death.

Ron considered himself lucky when it came to Rose. As the older of Ron and Hermione's two children, she was, in a way, the test flight for their ability to raise an adolescent. Rose was mild mannered, well behaved, liked to study, and, unlike many of her cousins, had no desire to light explosives on fire or entice younger children into potentially dangerous situations. Ron had seen, often first hand, the antics that his brothers had to deal with when it came to their teenage girls.

"Dad. Dad!" Rose had to say her father's name twice to get his attention as his mind conjured the image of a six year old Rose playing contentedly outside in the garden.

"Yeah, sorry. What is it?"

"Can I ask you something a little embarrassing?" Rose requested as she focused intently on stirring her coffee.

"Anything", Ron said, which he soon regretted considering that 'anything' might be too broad of a subject for him to handle.

She scrunched her face up, in the same way that she had when she was thinking her entire life. "When, well if, I get married, do I have to change my name?"

"What?" Ron asked, a little surprised.

"Will I have to change my name and be a Smith or a Brown or White or something that's—that's, well, not a Weasley I guess?"

"You won't ever have to do anything you don't want to do", Ron said, perhaps more forcefully than he meant. "_When_ you get married, you won't have to change your name if you don't want to." He had emphasized the 'when' because when Rose had added the 'if' in her question, he sensed that this was something that she was really worried about. Ron remembered a time when he thought he would never find the perfect person to spend the rest of his life with, or more like he would never be able to find her again.

"Good, because I don't want to ever not have the same name as you and mum", Rose said, with much more conviction than Ron had ever heard out of a sixteen year old.

"You have no idea how happy that makes me. Now if only you told me that you decided you weren't going to date until you are forty, I wouldn't need any Christmas presents at all, not even food", Ron said laughing.

"Dad!" Rose shrieked in a whisper. "That is twenty four years!"

"Trust me, it goes by faster than you think", Ron said somberly.

They settled into a comfortable silence, watching the sunrise over the snow covered hills. The garden that was always planted in the summer was mostly dead, although there were some bushes that kept their color all year long, and Hermione had decided to grow two evergreen trees on either side of the windows.

"Dad, look!" Rose suddenly said and pointed to one of the still green bushes. "I didn't know they could live in the snow!"

Ron looked to where his daughter was pointing. There were two blue butterflies, beating their wings continuously to stay above the ground. Ron was shocked, like Rose, he didn't know they could live in the cold. The two insects continued to fly around the bush for it seemed eternity, although the rising sun barely moved. Father and daughter were transfixed by the phenomenon; that was until they heard what sounded like a small stampede coming down the front steps.

"It's Christmas!" a jubilant eighteen year old James S Potter screamed down the stairs sounding more like a five year old.

Ron and Rose gave each other a look and laughed. The butterflies seemed to have disappeared, almost as if by magic. Rose stood first and walked slowly to meet her cousins in the living room with the tree. Ron followed after his daughter, leaning against the wall between the dining room and the living room. Rose stood back with her cousin Molly who was bouncing a one year old infant on her hip. Neither of them had ever been the cousins who dared to get in between James, Fred, and Dominique when it came to presents.

Hermione walked over to her daughter and stuck a small package in her hands "from your father", she whispered as she dived quickly back into the battle under the tree, trying to save the more fragile gifts. Rose slowly unwrapped the paper and opened the tiny box. In it laid a white gold pendant connected to a long chain. The pendant was a Rose with the word _Weasley_ engraved along the stem. Rose walked back over to her father.

"Thank you so much. I love you dad", she said as she kissed him gently on the cheek, like butterfly wings.

"I love you too, Rosie."

Sixteen years later, a fifty seven year old Ron hugged a sobbing Hermione to his neck. He felt her sobs pulsating through his body. He was trying to hold back his own.

It was a gorgeous fall day with the sun shining and the remaining green from summertime only just beginning to fade to the various colors of autumn. But, no matter how much sun fell on his skin, nothing would relieve the feeling Ron carried. It felt like someone had kicked him: in his heart, in his stomach, in his eyes tired from crying, in his arms that now held and supported his wife. Ron saw his son standing next to him, tears gliding down his face; a son who faced dragons and climbed mountains, then laughed. Ron sensed the rest of his family behind him, providing silent support. Yet it was not enough.

Life was not supposed to be this way. This was not what he had fought for. Parents were never supposed to bury their children.

Yet, there his daughter lay, in a pristine white coffin, about to be put six feet deep into the ground, never to see the light of a morning again. He would never see her get married; he would never see her give life to her first child. There were so many things that she missed out on, so much life that she had yet to live that she would never experience.

But like the books she had so loved, his daughter had been consumed by the fire.

The wizard leading the ceremony finished his monotonous speech, talking about a girl, no a woman whom he had never had the privilege of knowing. Ron despised the irony.

Ron felt the shift in the air as he various family members began to move. First, Ron's own parents threw white flowers into the grave. They were the same kind of flowers that Rose had worn in her hair when she graduated from Hogwarts. They were the same flowers that she wore for Victoire's wedding where she was a bridesmaid. They were the same white flowers that as a child, Rose had worn in her hair playing make believe with her cousins. One by one, the family members tossed the innocent white flowers into the grave until the only three people that were left were Hugo, Hermione, and Ron.

Hugo looked at his father who nodded to him. Hugo used his wand to conjure a wreath of pink Roses. When Hermione saw them, she began to cry, if possible, even harder. Hugo took his mother's weight from his father and guided her to the grave. Together they gently laid the wreath by the headstone. The wizard leading the ceremonies covered Ron's daughter with dirt. Ron walked forward, and took his wand out to engrave the words into tombstone.

_Here Lies Rose Weasley_

_A Beautiful and Kind Daughter, Sister, and Friend_

_RIP_

_Nov 14, 2005-Sept 30, 2037_

As Ron finished carving the stone, a lone blue butterfly came to land on the top. It almost seemed to wait patiently for Ron to notice it, for as soon as he looked away from the dirt covering his daughter's body and saw the butterfly, it flew over to him, close to his cheek. He could have sworn that he felt its wings flapping against the soft skin of his face. Then the wind blew and the butterfly left, but as it flew away, Ron heard _I love you, dad_ in the wind.

"I love you too, Rosie" Ron whispered. He fell to his knees and buried his face in his hands. He let the tears fall and the sobs rack over his body. He let his daughter's soul fly away for him. He let the butterfly kisses fall on his cheek, for one last time. uGgH


End file.
